Monday Smiles – 7/8/2013

I don’t remember the last time I didn’t post on Sunday or missing two days in one week. And Saturday was, for the most part, a repost of something from 2010. I seem to be unmotivated to write lately … ideas are few and even when I have a topic, I’m having trouble sitting down to write. It’s much easier to open my Google Nexus Tablet and play Mole Word. But if you are a regular here, you know, I don’t miss Mondays because it is important that I start my week with a Smile. And that is easy this week because our dear friends, Rita and Barry were here from Virginia. So many times my Monday Smiles have been about places we’ve gone or things we’ve seen on the weekend. With Rita and Barry, we really don’t have to go anywhere … we just talk and talk … and talk. We talked in the family room and in the kitchen over breakfast and lunch. We talked as we watched the birds and bunnies come and go in the yard and over dinner at Rutabegorz, a local hippie-style health food restaurant. And on an outing to our park Saturday afternoon. OK, we took a two hour break to see an odd little movie, Frances Ha, at the artsy-fartsy theater and we did sleep Saturday night. But other than that, we talked.

From the time they arrived at 10:30 Saturday, the conversation flowed, frequently punctuated by laughter. After all, in fifty years of friendship, we’ve watched each other age and watched our families grow. We’ve been by each others’ sides at the peaks and in the valleys of life. So we’ve got a million old stories to retell and new ones to share. We tell the story of the time Barry was attacked by a goose at the park and had to go to the emergency room. We relate how they kept it a secret that my son broke their daughter’s arm when they were watching him while we were on vacation … and how it came out over Thanksgiving dinner 20 years later. We tell endless grandkid stories but never get bored. Barry and I tell Shaggy Dog Stories. As sometimes happens with seniors, our conversations occasionally pause as we try to remember the name a movie or book we enjoyed … Barry and I instantly reach for our phones to Google the answer and get dirty looks from our wives … who , by the way, have no objections when we use them to show off our grandkids’ pictures. We talk about about childhood friends and family … and what it was like growing up. We tell each other details of life that I suspect we tell few other people. Like most old couples, we talk about health and aging and medical stuff, but usually end up laughing.

And then it’s 1:00 on Sunday afternoon and they’re getting into their rental car … and we’re still talking. Muri has a tear in her eye … but we’ll be seeing them this fall when we go back for their granddaughter’s Bat Mitzvah. Old friends are the best friends. It’s Monday … I’m smiling.

What a happy post!!! Friends like that are so rare. Sadly some of the friends we have made along the way have gradually disappeared from our life with the exception of Christmas cards. That is so wonderful that you have maintained this level of friendship for such a long time.